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Pakistan

The murder of infants, particularly girls, by poverty-stricken parents in Pakistan appears to be on the rise.

Late at night two months ago in a village in Pakistan’s Punjab Province, the parents of a two-day-old infant girl smothered the child, and then buried her tiny body in a distant field, carefully patting down the soil to hide any signs of digging. The mother cries often and says she still has nightmares about the event.

MULTAN, 28 September 2011 (IRIN) - Being beaten almost daily by her husband is a routine part of Saadia Bibi’s life. “Ever since I was married nearly seven years ago, I have been slapped, punched or kicked virtually every day. Once or twice my husband has burnt me with cigarettes,” she told IRIN in Multan, in conservative southern Punjab, displaying the distinct, circular scars on her shoulders and legs.

The “misdemeanours” Saadia has been beaten for include cooking food which is “tasteless”, speaking “too loudly” on the telephone or “arguing back”.

The project was designed to address the issue of gender based violence against women that has become an endemic in Pakistani society and is taking a very heavy toll on the confidence, self-esteem and physical, mental and psychological health and even life of the targeted girls and women. It aimed at elimination /mitigation of the effects of the below listed factors that become instrumental in pacing up the discriminatory and violent behavior and conduct against women.

Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) was founded in August 1992 on the recommendation of the Pakistan National Conservation Strategy (NCS), also called Pakistan’s Agenda 21. SDPI's research program is multi-disciplinary and problem-oriented. It is an iterative and flexible program that evolves and changes with policy needs, research capacity and interest. There has been negligible research to determine how many women own land and how many control land.

WAR is a group of committed women and men dedicated to building a sensitised society free from gender-based oppression, discrimination, exploitation and violence. WAR aims to raise awareness about the issues of sexual violence and rape; help the survivors legally, psychologically and medically; punish the perpetrators and improve the laws relating to rape and other forms of sexual abuse and violence.

A women's rights organization and has a presence in several cities in Pakistan. It is a non-partisan, non-hierarchical and non-funded organization. It is supportive of all aspects of women's rights and related issues, irrespective of political affiliations, belief system, or ethnicity. Women's Action Forum came into being in Karachi in September 1981. The following year, the Lahore and then the Islamabad Chapters were formed. Some years later, the Peshawar chapter came into being. And in May 2008, a Chapter of WAF started in Hyderabad, in the Province of Sindh.

Shirkat Gah is a women’s rights organisation based in Lahore, Pakistan, and acts as the regional office (RCO-Asia) of the international network Women Living Under Muslim Laws. It has provided support to women who have been subjected to forced marriages and has organised and campaigned around cases of 'honour killings' of women. It has also documented customary practices, including 'honour crimes', which result in violence against women throughout Pakistan. Shirkat Gah also has legal advice centres, researchers on health/reproductive rights, as well as VAW and equality under the law.